Sep. 8th, 2014

Sep. 8th, 2014

LINK: http://ift.tt/1htjRg2Ain’t no one ever called Bucky Barnes a genius, and ain’t no one ever going to. But he isn’t stupid. Getting shipped out is a one way trip.!fic, site:archiveofourown, fandom:captainamerica, fandom:marvelcinematicuniverse, rating:generalaudiences, ~author:non_sequential, character:bucky|james.barnes, genre:gen

LINK: http://ift.tt/1vwHOjI“Phil, in the real world, when friends catch friends spying on each other, they apologize and promise never to do it again.”!fic, site:archiveofourown, fandom:marvelcinematicuniverse, rating:generalaudiences, pairing:clint.barton/darcy.lewis, ~author:kellifer_fic, genre:gen, entertaining

why are people so afraid to google things? why come to someone’s inbox and ask a researchable question where you may have to wait hours, days, even weeks for a response when you can google it in less than 3 seconds? what are you afraid of? results?

1) Because doing research is a skill, and not everybody has it. Data mining is difficult. What seems to you to be a simple, obvious google search is not necessarily that obvious. How do you know which keywords to use? How do you know which website that pops up will have the information you’re looking for?

2) Because figuring out what information is reliable and what information isn’t reliable is a god damn crapshoot—again, especially if you’re not highly practiced, but often even if you are. Maybe you get three or four or ten different answers, possibly mostly in agreement, possibly conflicting. Who’s trustworthy? Who’s lying out their asses? How do you make these disparate pieces of information fit together?

3) Because the sources you find on the internet are very rarely tailored to exactly the question you’re trying to ask. You may not even know exactly the question you’re trying to ask. A static internet webpage cannot work with you to figure out what you need to know.

4) Because a great many people learn things better in an interactive context than just from words on a page. This is why we have teachers in classrooms instead of just babysitters and textbooks. As a group, we complain about and dislike schools where class involves a teacher acting like a babysitter, and telling the kids to just look things up in their textbook. Remember?

Addendum, a large number of people on tumblr and on the internet at large may have intellectual disabilities, difficulties with language processing, etc etc, which make 1-4 significantly more difficult. People without disabilities may also find points 1-4 hard. Some people with disabilities may find them all easy. But it is well worth considering that not everybody’s brain works like yours does, and not everybody interfaces with information like you can.

5) Sometimes, because the question has to do with the person we’re asking specifically. If Amy gets really angry every time the subject of Bob comes up, I am not going to go to Carol to ask what Amy’s deal is. I am going to say, “Hey Amy, why do you get so angry about Bob?”Then either Amy well tell me what her deal is herself, or, if we’re on the internet, 30% chance Amy is going to call me a fucking scumsucking idiot and rage about me all in caps with a lot of exclamation points for the rest of the night.

6) Often, because the people being asked these questions set themselves up as experts in the first place. They blog extensively about a subject, or speak knowledgeably about it. They write lengthy posts pertaining to their topic. Maybe they just reference this topic in passing a whole lot. But very, very often, when a blogger gets asked a question, it’s because that blogger has demonstrated knowledge about the topic at hand.

It is nobody’s responsibility to spend their time writing essays to educate random strangers on the internet. HOWEVER, it is not that far a leap to think that some people, when puzzled by a confusing question, would rather ask an expert than try to deal with datamining a solution on their own.

Of course, tumblr has developed a culture where it’s even odds that you’ll get a fantastic, well-thought-out, informative answer, or you’ll be publicly shamed and excoriated for daring to ask such a dumb, dumb, stupid question.

LINK: http://ift.tt/178Zs1K“Hide that,” he says, forcing the words out past every instinct. “As well as you can, all right? Before morning.” Steve stares at him blankly, like he needs a moment to work this out, then swallows once, sharply. “What’s your name?” he asks at last—asks as he stands there with the pelt in his hands. And oh, he thinks suddenly, what is his name? He can’t speak it, not with this mouth, he can’t sing it into the air like he can in the ocean. He just shakes his head; like his nakedness, it’s something he can’t explain. Steve nods, just nods, his eye swelling shut and blood drying on his shirt collar, and says “we’ll figure it out.” (An AU where Bucky is a young selkie who is accidentally called to Steve and ends up staying around to help this poor, wretched kid not die.)!fic, site:archiveofourown, fandom:captainamerica, fandom:theavengers, rating:teenandupaudiences, pairing:james.”bucky”.barnes/steve.rogers, ~author:legete, genre:au, trope:selkie!fic

youre…not helping a lot of ppl, and youre contributing to a frequently hurtful misconception

yep. this is a recent trend in tumblr autistic discourse that i find really disturbing.

most of the people saying ‘some of us don’t experience empathy, and that’s ok’ seem to be working off a very narrow (and neurotypical) definition of ‘empathy’. they often describe themselves as experiencing something, which they posit as an alternative to empathy, but which i would define as empathy.

empathy doesn’t have to be a feeling and it doesn’t have to be fully understanding what someone else goes through and it doesn’t have to be always remembering that other people are different from you. everyone has trouble with that.

empathy also isn’t, like, some mysterious nebulous magic trick. it’s a skill you can work on, and it is worth working on.

‘Empathy is the capacity to share or recognize emotions experienced by another sentient or fictional being.’ that’s the first line of wikipedia.

you don’t have to interpret emotions from facial expression or tone or NT body language! you don’t have to react as an NT person would! you don’t have to look empathetic, your recognition of another person’s feelings doesn’t have to be innate or simple or perfect

lots of people have trouble empathizing, but a lot of them are NT people who clearly can’t empathize with us. and as it shakes down, i’d say there is no correlation between difficulty empathizing and autism.

if you think there is, you’re buying into the stereotypes. please rethink how you are defining empathy; please try to express this sentiment in another way; please consider how the things you already experience do constitute empathy.

So saying that autistic people as a group don’t experience empathy is obviously very harmful and factually not true and it is extremely important to correct that misconception. But, honestly, I object to a lot of this.

Mostly the idea that all autistic people experience empathy, and anyone who says otherwise is using the word wrong. I do experience empathy, or the thing that everyone told me was empathy. I know this because I have experienced empathy about twice in the past year. It is not something I do consistently or even hardly ever, but I know what it feels like. What I feel the rest of the time is - not that. Or anything else. You say that empathy doesn’t have to be a feeling, which I guess makes sense, but sharing and recognizing emotions is something that I fundamentally find extremely difficult. Not that I don’t work on it, constantly, but it’s hard.

I think the main issue here is that the way the word empathy is used by neurotypical people to stigmatize us (not that this use exists primarily for that purpose) doesn’t go away just because there’s a better definition. I don’t feel emotions about other people’s emotional states. I have huge problems trying to create mental models for those states and honestly I don’t even feel my own emotions as anything recognizable most of the time. This is not about facial expressions, it’s about literally not having the commensurate emotional experience. I have been told that this means I lack empathy. I have been told that not having empathy makes me less of a person.

And the first time I saw someone say “not all autistic people experience empathy, and that’s okay” was also the first time I felt like the way I experienced emotions didn’t make me inherently evil or something. I still care about people. I still perform caring actions towards people. I still make a deliberate conscious effort to understand other people and their perspectives. But that is not empathy by any definition of empathy I’ve ever heard. There is no internal experience of any kind involved. Recognizing and sharing emotions, I still suck at it. It is not helpful for me to pretend I don’t. And I don’t think that this makes me a bad or uncaring person, being able to accept that has made me a lot happier even more generous and caring, since I was able to localize where my problems were coming from.

And I know that the definition of empathy being used here is ableist, or is used in an ableist way. I just feel strongly that trying to change the definition or reclaim it or w/e is not the best way to go about combatting this stigma. Being able to feel/understand other people’s emotions is a legitimate concept, and there’s nothing wrong with having a word for it.

The real problem here is that there is an extremely strong cultural bias that says “empathy” = “being a good person”. Or being a nice person or an understanding person or a caring person. Or even being a person. It doesn’t mean any of those things. I think it is more helpful to decouple empathy from personhood than it is to create a new definition of empathy that automatically includes everyone. No matter how much you pick at the definition, there is an actual thing being described here, and it is not something that everyone has.

(All of that with the caveat that lots of autistic people do experience empathy and lots of non-autistic people don’t experience empathy, the way it’s commonly defined and do face stigma or self-loathing or etc. because of it.)

i see what you’re saying, and i don’t have a simple response. i get how even the word ‘empathy’ can be a hair-trigger, and maybe we should stop using it so heavily because it is a vague and nebulous concept. in many ways this seems like a semantic argument, about which kinds of words hurt different people’s heads.

i’m going to bring in these tags from portmanteaurian: #to me empathy is just understanding that other people have interiority#and valuing their understanding of their experiences#not necessarily comprehending their experiences or feelings#not ”feeling their pain”#just accepting that it exists and is valid#and that is something i feel everyone is capable of doing

and you say ‘I still make a deliberate conscious effort to understand other people and their perspectives.’ which is… important.

i don’t think any one characteristic should be inherently coupled with personhood; i don’t think any people should be thought of as nonpersons. but i do think that it’s important that we have a way to accurately refer to people who don’t care about other people’s experiences/feelings/inner lives, and who don’t feel compunction about harming people. actually i think this is more about actions than it is about people. there are mindsets that are dangerous. i guess it’s important to me to be able to say, for example, that when i’m upset and my mother tries to ‘comfort’ me, but what she does is making me more upset, but she doesn’t notice or care because she’s so attached to the idea that she’s ‘comforting’, she is being unempathetic. she is not paying attention to my reactions or considering them important.

idk. like i said, i don’t have an easy answer. and i — i would say i empathize with your perspective, but maybe that bothers you? i understand your perspective.

what’s always really confused me about this discussion is that I don’t really understand what people are saying on either side.like. what IS empathy? popular media tends to equate a lack of it with sociopathy, which I am 110% sure is a not true and hurtful ableist thing, butargh I don’t even have the words to ask the questions I want to, so I’m really sorry if this doesn’t make sense or is derailing or hurtful.my personal understanding of what empathy is has always been that you understand that other people have emotions just like you do and can go okay, you’re in pain. when i’m in pain, that sucks, so you being in pain must suck for you.like clearly there are levels of empathy - I can empathize more with someone who’s facing a situation like one I’ve personally experienced, for example - but that’s not saying I can’t have empathy for someone in a completely unfamiliar situation, just that it would be a more abstract or intellectual kind of empathy.and I don’t really understand what the relationship between empathy and compassion is? like. people seem to differentiate between the ability to empathize and the ability to care about people and that may well be totally legit but I just don’t get it???

LINK: http://ift.tt/YGTUrWBucky’s face hadn’t changed, but Steve’s jaw was sticking out at a angle best described as ‘mulish’. “Okay,” said Sam, taking a fortifying drink of his coffee. “You guys gonna use words any time soon, or do I tattle to Nat?” Author’s Notes: So I had another stroke on Twitter and started talking about how Steve Rogers would be a clinic escort because 1. he’d probably be pretty okay with people NOT dying from back alley abortions, let’s be real, like, his mom was a nurse in a poor area of Brooklyn in the 1920s, and 2. Steve hates assholes. THEN coinin sent me the BEST QUILT EVER and between one thing and another this is for her. <3!fic, site:archiveofourown, fandom:captainamerica, fandom:marvelcinematicuniverse, rating:teenandupaudiences, pairing:james.”bucky”.barnes/steve.rogers, pairing:james.”bucky”.barnes.&.steve.rogers.&.sam.wilson, pairing:james.”bucky”.barnes.&.steve.rogers.&.natasha.romanov.&.sam.wilson, ~author:lazulisong, genre:gen, entertaining, note:drabble/ficlet

LINK: http://ift.tt/1jmxKlpCarolyn Brown’s having one of those days. Her truck’s been stolen, she’s about to lose her job, and now a crazy Hydra assassin has broken into her apartment to ambush Captain America.!fic, site:archiveofourown, fandom:captainamerica, fandom:marvelcinematicuniverse, rating:generalaudiences, ~author:neery, genre:gen, genre:episode-tag/missing-scene, trope:outside!pov

Summary: Based on this GKM prompt: "Blaine is a sub who works part-time as a professional submissive. He non-sexually submits to Doms to help them with their need or stop their Sickness. Everything is very safe and professional. He loves his job, as he gets to help people and make them happy and healthy.Kurt is a late bloomer, getting his Dom mark after he moves to New York. New hormones are flooding his veins and he’s terrified, as he has no experience, no Dom classes, etc, and he doesn’t know where to begin.” (Read the whole prompt here, though I’ve veered from it in a few places.)

A/N: Thanks to my porn-enablement team, wowbright and damnpene.

———

When it started, Blaine wasn’t even supposed to be at work at all.

He’d finished his last session for the day, and he had dance class back at NYADA at four, so he still had to shower and change and have a mid-afternoon snack before he walked back over to campus. But he’d started talking with Greg and Silas in the subs’ lounge and he’d lost track of time. All the guys were so funny and kind, with none of the competitiveness or drama of the people he met at school. He’d taken this job because the hours were flexible and he liked getting to help people, but sometimes he thought the best part was getting to shoot the breeze in the lounge after sessions. Which was where Bruno found him.

“Got a walk-in,” he said gruffly from the doorway. Bruno was a big burly dom, one of the aides specifically there to make sure none of the clients overstepped their bounds. Maybe because he was the toughest-looking dom in the clinic, he was also the most careful about maintaining propriety. He never ventured into the lounge without a specific invitation, not even when the door was open. “The boss wants Devon for it, if you’re free.”

“Me?” Blaine frowned.

Bruno shrugged. “Should be an easy one. Guess you’re due.”

Read More

This story is so seductive. I am particularly taken in by all the allusions to Shakespeare that take place throughout, which I think Shakespeare would have appreciated, prolific writer of excellent fanfic that he was.

Also, it’s adult (in all meanings of the word) and a wonderful exploration into (1) the roles we play in our various relationships and (2) what love is.

holy worldbuilding, batman!such a fresh take on this particular trope, and so well written ;_; where is the moarrrrr i need it

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LINK: http://ift.tt/1mtWTZsBlaine’s parents are away from home a lot. Which he’s never really thought of as a problem, until now. Diverges from canon during and after 4x22!fic, site:archiveofourown, fandom:glee, rating:mature, pairing:blaine.anderson/kurt.hummel, pairing:blaine’s.father/blaine’s.mother.(glee), pairing:adam.crawford/kurt.hummel, pairing:cooper.anderson/original.female.character(s), ~author:corinna, genre:au, au:spy!au, awesome, season/series-four, character:blaine.anderson, character:cooper.anderson

you know, I thought I understood the ‘hands up/don’t shoot’ movement and protests and the sheer horror of the danger of just being a black man/ in this country (as much as a white person can, anyway, I am in no way saying I thought I understood it as a visceral truth), but about a week ago it hit me that if I and my family were black, my brother would likely be dead.

He has severe ADD and might well be autistic (he’s certainly got traits) and is generally just large and physically imposing. He moves suddenly and in odd ways and will just sort of explode into motion and noise without thinking about it.

He has long hair and wears a goddamn trench coat and is mouthy as fuck. He’s not particularly quick to anger but he’s terrifying when he is - loud and aggressive in a way he doesn’t mean to be. He slams doors and hits the wall because the anger flares up so quickly and strongly it has to explode out of him somehow and that’s better than possibly hurting someone.

He can’t help but call people out on their idiocies and irrationalities. He will pick at your words because you said it wrong, don’t you understand that?

He’s weird (look I don’t know how else to put it) and will do shit like stop in the middle of walking just to stare at the moon for a good fifteen to twenty minutes, which has in fact gotten him stopped by cops in the past because he looked shady as fuck.

If he were black, would they have bothered asking what he was doing? Or would they have just started yelling and scared the shit out of him, making him jump wildly?

would he have died two years ago, a first-year art student, his only crime wanting to look at the moon?

***** I wasn’t tagged but xyphoidprocess invited people to do this here. And again, MBTI means barely anything, but I have fun being called a Mastermind.

INTJ: Mastermind

INTJs are clever, analytical, pragmatic and logical, and are not scared to tell someone (or themselves) when they’re being stupid. They emphasize efficiency, making them simultaneously loners and excellent leaders. Their natural talent for planning and system-building often makes them the perfect villains.

Lightning Farron from Final Fantasy XIII

Mr. Blackadder, Esq. from Blackadder the Third

Rupert Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Det. Kate Beckett from Castle

Four (Tobias Eaton) from Divergent

Harry Dresden from The Dresden Files

Rose Lalonde and Dirk Strider from Homestuck

Francis Urquhart from House of Cards (UK)

Arima Soichiro from Kare Kano

Nathan Ford from Leverage

GLaDOS from Portal

Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice

Kyuubey from Puella Magi Madoka Magica

wow just look at that list what am I going to do with them all (adore them) (from a safe distance)

MBTI I’m pretty sure has been kind of debunked, but I’ve always found it a useful indicator of some basic personality clashes and helpful in dealing with them (recognizing that Kate is a TJ and I am an FP and adjusting conversations accordingly, for example - she is far more likely to want solutions while I generally mostly just want validation)

Plus I have an attachment to being an INFP and therefore a special snowflake of some kind.

I test pretty regularly as being on the border between INFP and ENFP, despite being an actual gold star introvert, so I’m listing both.

(ETA: o.O due to the crazy long lists of characters I am cutting them down to just characters I know)

(ETA the Second: OH JUST THE ONES WE FIND RELEVANT HA I READ DIRECTIONS)

Bolded ones are the ones I feel closes to. <3

INFP (Healer)

INFPs are absolute idealists: they have values inside them which they really want to live by. This makes them good at encouraging other people’s growth, but can cause them to be too hard on themselves. They can be shy and reserved, but they’re incredibly passionate and intelligent individuals with an innate need to change the world.

Jeanette from Alvin and the Chipmunks

Tina Belcher from Bob’s Burgers

Tara from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter

Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon

Violet Parr from The Incredibles

Sarah Williams from Labyrinth

Raleigh Becket from Pacific Rim

Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird

(Side Note: They list Zuko from Avatar as an INFP but he doesn’t really feel similar to me IDK?)

ENFP (Champion)

ENFPs like to change things for the better, and have contagious enthusiasm, but no patience for crossing I’s and dotting T’s. They are good at anticipating others’ needs, but crave attention and recognition.

Rapunzel from Tangled

Eleanor from Alvin and the Chipmunks

Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds

Phoebe Buffay from ‘Friends”

Anna from Frozen

Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls

Blaine Anderson from Glee

Marshall Erikson from How I Met Your Mother

Eliot Spencer from Leverage

Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Elan from The Order of the Stick

Usagi Tsukino/Sailor Moon from Sailor Moon

Maria von Trapp from The Sound of Music

Cecil from Welcome to Night Vale

also: I would not have pegged some of their INFJs and ENFJs as such; if I’d ever thought about it I’d have probably said INFP or ENFP. huh.

it’d been coming for a while so it’s not really all that surprising; it’s a cheap-ass bed-in-a-bag comforter I got eight years ago heading off to university. the surprising part is really that it’s made it this far.

and yet

I do still have my second comforter, which is usable! it’s not unbearable or anything, it just doesn’t feel as nice as THIS comforter and also it has itchy and childish ruffles because we had to go to the baby section of the store to find anything tolerable back when I originally bought it.

and I had already been looking at new comforters because this one was starting to fall apart, so I at least have a potential candidate for a new one, if I can get over the OH GOD COMMITMENT bit I keep balking at.

the texture isn’t perfect, but it’s 100% cotton so it should only get softer and hopefully more like the one it’s meant to replace.

it’s pretty loud, which worries me - what if I get sick of it? how will I decorate with it? clearly I won’t be able to have a bright blue bedroom again if I get it.

it’s really damn cheerful tho —

—and god knows I can always use a little cheer.

.

.

.

jfc, tho. three separate stores and I only found three bearable sets of bedding. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of sets they had.

LINK: http://ift.tt/QFsdLFBucky’s dad always says what they do is important. “We give people the dignity they deserved in life,” he says, seriously. Uncle Danny laughs at that. “Jimmy-kid,” he says, “your old man has got some real trumped up notions of what it is we do. Death ain’t beautiful. We just help create the illusion that it can be.”!fic, site:archiveofourown, fandom:captainamerica, fandom:captainamerica-allmediatypes, fandom:marvelcinematicuniverse, rating:teenandupaudiences, pairing:james.”bucky”.barnes.&.steve.rogers, pairing:james.”bucky”.barnes.&.rebecca.barnes.proctor, pairing:james.”bucky”.barnes/steve.rogers, ~author:rosepetalfall, genre:character-study, pre-canon, genre:gen, warning:violence, warning:other/unspecified, trope:outside!pov, character:bucky|james.barnes

2 members of Lost Voices were arrested last night for failure to comply and manner of walking… aka being in the street when sidewalks are provided… aka jaywalking. MORE posted bail for the 2 members and for 150+ other people as well.

The grand jury in the killing of Mike Brown is only meeting once a week and are being treated as co-investigators. Also, legal experts say it’s unlikely that Darren Wilson will be charged with 1st degree murder. 2nd degree murder is possible but also unlikely if he argues that he feared for his life.